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Prosecutions up in war zones

As the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan wind down, the number of people indicted is rising. |
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By ASSOCIATED PRESS | 10/30/11 8:16 AM EDT

WASHINGTON - A Marine in Iraq sent home $43,000 in stolen cash by hiding it in a footlocker among American flags. A soldier shipped thousands more concealed in a toy stuffed animal. An embassy employee tricked the State Department into wiring $240,000 into his foreign bank account.

As the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan wind down, the number of people indicted and convicted by the U.S. for bribery, theft and other reconstruction-related crimes in both countries is rapidly rising, according to two government reports released Sunday.

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“This is a boom industry for us,” Stuart Bowen, the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, said in an interview.

“Investigators and auditors had a productive quarter,” said a report on the theft of Afghanistan aid by Steven Trent, who holds the same job for Afghanistan. His report covered August through October.

In the past 13 months, U.S. investigators in Iraq secured the indictments of 22 people for aid-related offenses, bringing to 69 the total since the SIGIR office was created in 2004. Convictions stand at 57. Several hundred more suspects are under scrutiny in 102 open investigations and those numbers are expected to climb.

The rise in caseloads derives partly from spinoff investigations, where suspects facing prosecution lead investigators to other suspects, said Jon Novak, SIGIR’s assistant inspector general for investigations.

“More and more people are ratting out their associates,” he said, turning in conspirators who helped launder money after it was stolen, others who were aware of it and others implicated in the crimes.

As investigators gain experience, they’re received better information from a growing network of sources in Iraq, said Dan Willkens, Novak’s deputy. Development of an automated data-mining system for investigations has helped, he said, as did a decision two years ago to speed prosecutions by hiring three former assistant U.S. attorneys and detailing them to the Department of Justice.

At the inspector general’s office for Afghan reconstruction, created in 2008, officials report only nine indictments and seven convictions so far. They say they’re trying to ramp up after years of upheaval and charges the office was mismanaged. Trent was named acting inspector general after his predecessor left in August and is the third person to hold the job.

Still, Trent reported that during the last quarter, an investigation initiated by his office netted the largest bribery case in Afghanistan’s 10-year war. A former Army Reserve captain, Sidharth “Tony” Handa of Charlotte, N.C., was convicted, sentenced to prison and fined for soliciting $1.3 million in bribes from contractors working on reconstruction projects.

Most crimes uncovered by U.S. investigators in the two war zones include bribery, kickbacks and theft, inspired in part by the deep and pervasive cultures of corruption indigenous to the countries themselves.

Among some of the cases listed in the reports were those of:

Gunnery Sgt. Eric Hamilton, who pleaded guilty to conspiracy in what prosecutors say was a scheme to help Iraqi contractors steal 70 generators that were meant to supply electricity for fellow Marines. He sent some of their payments home in a footlocker and had other money wired, the report said.

I can hear it now from all the teanut repubs crying about this, it's not fair to prosecute them. That's why the repubs had no accountable for 8 years, give no bid contracts to friends, billions unaccounted for in both wars, and loved the war profiteering. And now this is happen and the repubs do not want this to come to light, so the repubs will step in to kill it for their friends.

Senator Byrd warned that by voting for the war resolution in October 2002, Congress was giving Bush a blank check, with no end in sight. As bees gather around a honeypot, crooks gather around a moneypot. All this corruption was to be expected. Added to this is the fact that due to the unpopularity of all these unnecessary wars, military recruitment standards have had to be lowered.